looping over the hills and through the green interior, electrical cables

carry home the news in small packages of light.

Carry home the news in small packages of light,

looping over the hills and through the green interior, electrical cables

now trailing in cool water, while from every islet and peninsula

surge along footpaths to the fingertips – mine –

impulses effervescing from the brain!

It’s understood two systems run at once:

I have been studying the new science of the nerves

for a giant’s game of pick up sticks.

The telegraph poles were ripped out,

my world flattened by hurricane

to banana fields, sugar cane and corn.

I was sent for, and returned.

Dr Cicely Williams was born in Jamaica in1893 and studied medicine at Oxford and King’s College Hospital, eventually becoming a paediatrician and first Director of Mother and Child Health at the World Health Organisation. Her studies were temporarily broken off twice. In 1912, she was called home after devastating hurricanes hit the island and ruined the family business. In 1921, she was summoned back to care for her mother while her brother remained at medical school.

First published in issue 67 of Mslexia magazine (September 2015) as a runner up in the 2015 MslexiaPoetry Competition.